


An Belinden

by zeugmas



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeugmas/pseuds/zeugmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Angela learned to stop worrying and love the innocent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Belinden

_Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte_  
_Nun nicht auf der Flur;_  
_Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' und Güte,_  
_Wo du bist, Natur._

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s hard, some days— _most_ days—to sit straight without a wince. Her back isn’t what it used to be, and the wings of her suit only put more pressure on her already compressed vertebrae. She’s been at this for far too long.

There are wrinkles around her eyes that she’s still surprised to notice. She forgets it, when she’s with Hana and Lúcio and the rest of the kids, but she’s nearing 40. Not everyone in this business makes it as long as Reinhardt: not Jack, not Gabriel, and certainly not Ana Amari.

She used to look at Fareeha and find the reflection of a kindhearted woman she couldn’t save, but it’s not that simple anymore. Fareeha has a smile that hints at nightmares: Angela knows, because hers is the same.

\--

It’s not an emergency because no one is dead, for once, and no one is dying, for once. A light work day, in Angela’s book; the ideal situation to complete the routine check-ups she has long put off.

She’s just finished letting Zarya go with a warning against straining her muscles with excessive weights—really, amounts that no human _should_ be able to lift, she pities the job of that girl’s cardiovascular system—when her next patient walks in.

Angela blinks. “Am I checking up on you, or does your suit have a heartbeat?”

There’s a small chuckle, and Fareeha removes her helmet with a click. “I didn’t want to be late for my appointment, so I decided that coming straight from practice would be more polite. Was I wrong in this assumption?”

A smile twitches at the edge of Angela’s lips. She shakes her head, and gestures to the exam table. “I appreciate it, though I wouldn’t have minded if you stopped off beforehand. As it is, you can remove your suit and take a seat.”

Fareeha nods, and does as Angela asked. She’s wearing black Under Armour and a pair of leggings that clings against her sweaty skin, and, well. Angela’s a professional, if nothing else.

“Your training went well? No unexpected injuries, unusually sore muscles?” she asks, wrapping her blood pressure cuff around Fareeha’s brachium. She may let her fingers linger on Fareeha’s not-unimpressive bicep, but whatever harm comes in casual flirtation is worth it for the way the other woman’s lips part.

“Perfect as usual,” Fareeha says after a moment, with the casual confidence she always has about her. It’s a trait that Angela doesn’t envy—not exactly—but admires nonetheless. The younger woman doesn’t so much as flinch while the cuff tightens around her.

“Glad to hear it,” she muses, recording the test’s results in her chart. She removes the cuff and wraps her stethoscope around her neck, before looking up to Fareeha’s face. Fareeha catches her gaze and quirks an eyebrow.

“Everything up to standards?”

Her blood pressure was an average 118/72 mm Hg, so Angela nods in affirmation. “Perfect as usual,” she echoes, and she doesn’t miss the flicker of a grin on Fareeha’s lips. She feels her own lips reflect it, and tilts her head down to her clipboard. “You’ve been eating well, I presume?”

“Of course.”

“Exercising up to 150 minutes a week?”

“Minimum.”

“Sleeping at least eight hours every night?”

This time, Fareeha hesitates, and Angela looks up from her notes. “Is that an issue for you?” she pushes.

“Yes,” is all Fareeha says, looking her directly in the eyes with that forceful stare of hers. Now that it’s been brought to attention, Angela notices dark bags settled deeply on her patient’s face—the kind that doesn’t come from just one night.

She coughs into her hand, and scribbles a few comments on her clipboard. “I don’t know whether you’ve tried anything, but there’s some tea in the kitchen that’s meant for relaxation. It’s supposed to work magic for sleep troubles.” Not that she’s used it herself.

“I’ll be sure to try it,” Fareeha says politely.

Sensing the end of that conversation, Angela continues with the check-up. All of Fareeha’s vitals fall perfectly within the normal range, and her previous injuries are healing according to schedule. It’s impressive, really, how her constant training doesn’t aggravate her wounds. Angela wonders offhandedly if it’s Fareeha’s stubbornness that forces her into such good health; if even her physiology follows a scheme of perfectionism.

Angela puts away her stethoscope and picks up a light pointer. “Focus on the picture over my shoulder.”

Her patient does as told, eyes locked ahead as Angela shines the light into her pupils. If she weren’t looking so attentively Fareeha’s face, she might’ve missed the way her eyebrows furrowed after a few moments of staring.

“Anything the matter?” she asks.

Clearly Fareeha was hoping she wouldn’t notice, as she hesitates before answering. “The picture,” she starts, before pausing again. And— _oh_.

“It’s the old team,” Angela confirms, turning the light off momentarily. She shifts over and shines the light on Fareeha’s other eye, feeling bad when she winces in surprise. “Sorry. Look at the picture, again.”

Fareeha doesn’t reply, eyes locked over Angela’s shoulder while she examines her retina. After a minute, Angela clicks the light off, and puts it down next to the blood pressure cuff. She hopes, in vain, that this will be the extent of their conversation on the matter—that they won’t have to dig up old memories, the ones that Angela already relives in the dead of each night, of screams and viscera and limbs everywhere; trying to help, hearing begs and doing everything she can to keep them alive, but she’s never been able to be at more than one place at once and it’s all she sees when her eyes are shut and everyone is begging her to please let it _end_ —

“I forget that you worked with her, sometimes,” Fareeha says, and the world is silent again. Angela realizes that she’s been shaking. She can’t imagine that Fareeha didn’t notice, but she can at least hope that the other woman is polite enough to not outright mention it.

Her fingers tighten around air, like she’s grasping at a phantom limb, and she forces out a chuckle. “I’m older than I like to think.”

“I believe that applies to everyone,” Fareeha replies, with a voice that makes Angela wonder whether she’s trying to comfort her—if in the emotionally stunted Fareeha Amari-type way she knows.

Somehow, it works. Angela lets out a shaky sigh and forces her back straight, allowing a small wince at the twinge that runs down her spine. It clearly doesn’t go unnoticed, judging by the tightening of Fareeha’s lips.

She wonders when, exactly, she became the patient in this situation: the subject of concerned glances and well-considered platitudes. That thought process is a dead end, she knows, but something about the way Fareeha looks at her makes her want to say everything.

She wonders when Fareeha became something other than Ana’s daughter to her: when, instead, thinking of Ana brought her straight to images of Fareeha, with her stronger jaw and darker eyes.

Sometimes, she even wonders if those steady glances are indicative of something beyond a strange sense of humour. From the tendency of Fareeha’s eyes to linger, she’s pretty certain her musings aren’t entirely off base.

It shouldn’t matter, either way. If there’s one quality she prides herself on, it’s pragmatism, and nothing good comes from poking around in a system that’s already functioning. Too many people have died by her hand, and not nearly enough saved. This, she knows, will remain her biggest regret.

\--

On a rare day off, dinner is quiet. Most of the crew is taking the opportunity for some much-needed relaxation, following their own schedules instead of the usual militarism they’re forced into. A lot of people find comfort in a break from routine.

Angela doesn’t. She sits quietly at the kitchen table with 76, Fareeha, and Winston, picking delicately at her suspiciously dated meatloaf leftovers. 76 asks for the salt, which she passes with a mumbled warning about hypertension. Fareeha’s usual stoneface breaks slightly for a small smirk, and Angela’s fingers tighten around her fork.

Winston yawns, hand politely covering his mouth. Fareeha passes the rest of her salad to him. “It’s good for you,” she comments, a dig that Angela can tell is aimed at her.

She’s been on this planet for 37 years, and all it takes to get her flushed is the slightest amount of flirtation. It might have been embarrassing, if the exchange were anything other than terrifying.

No matter how many pictures she keeps in her room, it’s only a matter of time before she forgets her mother’s voice. She’s lived longer without her father than with him. Her first love is a faint memory of shy kisses during study breaks, and a courtship that lasted longer than the relationship itself.

Fareeha may not be subtle in her intentions, but Angela is too old for catastrophic romance. She’s seen how virtues get corrupted in the worst of times. She doesn’t have the ability to hand herself over like a ragdoll and pray for the best, as though the world doesn’t hate all things pure of heart.

She clears her throat and slides her chair back, pointedly averting her gaze as she picks up her half empty plate. No one will mind if she throws away the remains, she’s sure. They’ve all had enough mystery meat to last a lifetime.

\--

Angela doesn’t need a clock to tell that it’s the time of night where the only people left awake are newborns and insomniacs, unable to stop the gears from grinding their thoughts in an incoherent hum. Purple light filters in through the kitchen shades and casts an earthly glow on her surroundings. It’s moments like this that manage to make it both hard to believe the world is falling apart, and hard to remember a time it was ever stable.

She burns her tongue, and flinches away from the mug in her hands. 

“I hope that’s decaf.”

Angela holds back a jump at the voice, if only barely. It’s not an unfamiliar one—she might have even gone so far as to say it’s not an unwelcome one, if the situation were any different. As things are, her tongue is swelling in her mouth; she can’t remember the last time she closed her eyes without seeing demons; there’s a beautiful woman in a state of undress right ahead of her, and all she can bear to think of is whether she remembered to turn the coffee machine off.

There’s something alien about seeing Fareeha out of her armour, leaning against the doorway with hair pulled away from her face. In this light, Angela can’t see the scars that she knows trace along the former veteran’s limbs: puckered epithelium, long since healed as much as it ever will. A moment like this is too fragile for comfort, so she picks her words carefully as she blows steam from the top of her mug.

“No bother going to sleep now if I’ll be woken in an hour by Lena trying to sneak back from wherever she ran off to,” she finally decides on, following Fareeha with her eyes as the other woman rummages through the cupboard.

“Have you not slept at all tonight?” Fareeha replies, clearly ignoring Angela’s attempt at a change in conversation. She turns around with a newly obtained teabag, and hitches an eyebrow in a way that makes her look even more devastating than normal.

It’s the strange atmosphere, Angela knows, that’s bringing a flush to her cheeks. The inherent romance of two people alone in a kitchen in the silence of morning. The bright light of an electric kettle heating up; the taste of warm coffee beans—caffeinated—melting down her throat.

That doesn’t make Fareeha’s drowsy gaze any less breathtaking. Angela sips at her mug once more, and contemplates the other woman as the kettle clicks off.

She’s too old for aimless fancy. “I haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time since this began,” she admits. Fareeha absently pours water into her own mug, and Angela knows she doesn’t need to elaborate any further.

“You don’t like what you see when you close your eyes for too long,” Fareeha says, and it isn’t a question.

It isn’t wrong, either. Angela doesn’t see any immediate purpose in responding, so she doesn’t.

Fareeha walks over to the table and nudges the seat next to Angela. She sits with a sigh, setting her mug down so she can stretch her arms over her head. Angela tries not to let her eyes follow Fareeha’s deltoids in the motion—a doctor’s curiosity, maybe.

She isn’t exactly fooling herself. From the faint smile on Fareeha’s face, she isn’t fooling her, either.

“What got you up at this time, then?” she asks, wary of the way her throat clenches when their knees brush. She’s _too old_ for this.

The upward twitch of Fareeha’s lips flattens, and she lets out a huff of air. “You’re not the only one with bad dreams,” she says.

 _I know_ , Angela thinks, remembering what Fareeha said during her check-up.

It’s better when she’s around, for reasons Angela doesn’t want to look to far into. Right now, with Fareeha next to her, she can blink and the image beneath her eyelids is dark. The ringing in her ears sings of white noise alone, sans the screams that have haunted her for years.

She doesn’t say anything. She raises her hand, slowly, and rests it against the woman’s neck.

Her fingers still as Fareeha’s breath hitches. “What are you doing?” she asks, and if Angela weren't busy looking at her own hand then she’s sure she would’ve seen Fareeha’s eyes darken.

“Checking your pulse,” she replies. Her thumb traces the length of Fareeha’s jaw, which loosens as Angela’s fingers tangle in the tufts of hair at the base of her neck.

“No, you’re not,” Fareeha says.

“No, I’m not,” Angela agrees.

\--

Fareeha tastes like tea with too much sugar, but nobody’s perfect.

When Angela sleeps, warm arms wrapped around her, she dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> [EDIT 7/12/16]: well, the Ana Amari in this fic is now completely jossed, but I kind of figured that would happen eventually. In any case, I hope that doesn't detract from the rest of the story!
> 
> -
> 
> This is my first published fic since I was 16 (for reference, I'm now 19) and really, it couldn't have been anything else. The working title was "Dr. Ziegler," hence the awfully pretentious description.
> 
> Translation for the Goethe poem, "An Belinden":  
>  _The springtime blossom in the meadow_  
>  _Charms me less by far:_  
>  _Where you are, Angel, is love and virtue,_  
>  _Nature is where you are._


End file.
